OCMA National Trends in Economic Development presentation
For those of you attending the Ohio City-County Manager’s association presentation today, here is a link to the presentation, in case you want to follow along. Gold star for you! ...
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Anchoring future prosperity, and the barriers that keep us from doing it.
I’ve referenced a guy named Umair Hacque on here before, and if you haven’t taken the hint and started reading his stuff yet, you should. If anyone is thinking and ...
Links from Northeast Ohio American Planning Association workshop, November 18, 2011
For those of you who attended my session on public participation at the workshop, I promised to post the links to the various online public participation and planning tools that ...
The Long Road to Recovery is probably longer than we think.
I put a post on my Google+ profile this morning calling attention to an article Richard Florida did for the Atlantic. Florida does a nice job here of summarizing ...
What’s “Wise” About a Wise Economy? Thinking Ahead
Another trait that distinguishes a wise person – and is a hallmark of a Wise Economy– is thinking ahead about the full range of potential outcomes of a decision. A wise ...
What’s “Wise” About a Wise Economy? Part 1
Last week I said: I’d like to say that the premise behind the “Wise” part of the Wise Economy was exhaustively researched and analytically founded…but it’s not. It’s mostly a ...
From the Planning Commissioner’s Journal: Welcome to the Tightrope Act
A few months ago, I received a wonderful invitation from the publisher of the Planning Commissioner’s Journal to start writing a regular column. The first one appears in the Spring ...
True Community Grit
The lesson for today, girls and boys, is that you’re most likely to find the insights you’re looking for in the place where you aren’t looking. I have struggled for ...
2011 Michigan Small Town and Rural Development conference – whad’ya want to talk about?
I am getting excited about the prospect of meeting you all at the Michigan Small Town and Rural Development Conference at Crystal Mountain in Thompsonville April 18-20! As I said ...
An open letter to the majority of elected officials at the state and federal levels:
Stop it. Just stop it. Are you trying to sound like children squabbling on the playground? I know you’re going to say the other side started it, it’s not my ...
Why Duany is wrong: Design and unforeseen consequences.
Gruen’s Grand Idea One of the news stories that has been circling the twittersphere lately is an interview with Andreas Duany in which he asserts that public participation requirements are ...
It’s OK to sound like a sick goose while not eating the ice cream.
This is a follow-up to my post a couple of weeks ago about community goal-setting (what should I make of the fact that the post with “ice cream” in the ...
Announcing the Birth of the Wise Economy Workshop
I am delighted to announce that I am starting a new firm, which will be known as the Wise Economy Workshop. WEW will help local governments plan for bright economic ...
Do Comprehensive Plans matter? Should we bother? Why?
Comprehensive planning gets a bad rap- one that it has partially, although not completely, deserved. In the past few years I seem to encounter more and more clients who are either trying to avoid ...
Malcolm agrees with me! (well, he would if he knew…)
Vacations are a wonderful thing… it’s a rare occasion for me to finish a book anymore (reports, yes, books… a different situation), but thanks to a long flight I was ...
Helicopter-parenting our communities?
Last Saturday my kids set up a lemomade stand on the street in front of my house. I wanted to encourage them to do it for all the usual good ...
Are we ever going to get past one-shot solutions?
I am writing this from a conference, listening to the keynote speaker, and feeling pretty discouraged. The speaker’s premise is one that I defintely support: Locally-grown businesses are critical to local ...
When the market catches up
There was another sign yesterday that our local economies are undergoing a significant shift: Colliers reports that the market for development of new retail facilities has come almost to a standstill, ...
What does a cluster do, anyways?
“Clustering” is one of those magic wizard ideas in economic development. Everyone knows that business clusters are good things, that somehow they make economies work better, but when someone asks ...
A Great New Way to Tell your Community’s Story!
As the National Main Street Conference continues, I’ve been talking a lot with Eric Model of Journeys Into on SIRIUS-XM about some exciting, inexpensive opportunities to promote the things that ...
Retail incubators — hm?
Another sign of the general oversupply of retail space in the US — and the opportunities this might provide. This article highlights a couple of retail real estate developers who ...
Man, what a turnout! And a little info on Pruning Back Retail.
First, thanks again to everyone who participated in the session on sustainable economic development at the APA National Conference in New Orleans. I am still shocked so many of you ...
Where’s the puck going to be? Economic development in 3 dimensions, not just one
A blog post from the Harvard Business Review (always worth seeing what the smarties are up to) makes a point about managing a job hunt, but it’s also relevant to ...
The Power of Corridors and community identity (Planning Commissioners Journal)
Planning Commissioner’s Journal usually finds something interesting and relevant to say, and this 2006 article by Hannah Twadell that was recently reposted remains relevant: Corridors link communities. And sometimes the ...
Microenterprise in Cincinnati and Adams/Brown Co — Congrats!
I have become increasingly convinced that microenterprise is one of the most effective low-cost ways to build the business base, especially in disadvantaged communities. Microenterprises can make a little money ...
Opportunity where you weren’t looking:upper story spaces
Here’s an idea that’s beautiful in its simplicity. Won’t work everywhere, and not a magic bullet, but it’s one of the hundreds of small good ideas that make a healthy ...
The OKI Fiscal Impact Model: why it works better than they used to.
After my last post about the OKI Fiscal Impact Model, I received several great comments. One of them reflected on past experience with a per capita fiscal impact model in ...
Creating a Wise Economy by breaking out of the box
We all live in boxes. We all operate on the unspoken assumption that the options available to us are constrained, are limited by something or someone. And those constraints limit ...
Cleveland still rocks, especially on Euclid Ave.!
http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2009/11/clevelands_euclid_corridor_pro.html Truth in advertising: even after 20+ years out of the region, I am still a huge Cleveland fan (the city, I mean — I gave up on the Browns ...
Agenda 360 and the Importance of Setting Brave Goals
Agenda 360, the Cincinnati-area initiative to catalyze regional growth, has announced a goal of creating 200,000 net new jobs in the next 10 years. A description, and a link to ...
The best decision tree ever
OK, a short one for Thanksgiving eve. This graphic from N-Judah Love Song says it all — and this applies both to us individually and to our communities. Sometimes you ...
response to a comment on opportunities from LinkedIn (and proof that I can’t write anything short!)
I spent way too much time writing this response on ULI’s LinkedIn group to my post on seeking opportunties to not put it here, too! Charles Brenton of Brenton Associates wrote: “Seeing ...
Change stinks…how can we do it better?
Just a brief thought: I really hate having my plans disrupted — I have a sick kid right now, and the last 24 hours have been a mad chase to ...
The Wise Economy manifesto, first draft
As I discussed in this post, I have spent most of my adult life thinking about how to deal with the impacts that economic change has on the health and ...
So what was the Fiscal Impact Analysis Model intended to do?
As I outlined in the last post on this topic, OKI’s Fiscal Impact Model was designed to provide every community in the OKI region with an off-the-rack option for fiscal ...
How much does it really cost?
One of the biggest challenges in local government economics, and I would say one of the most important ones, is understanding the fiscal impacts of the kinds of things that get built ...
Indiana’s Top 9 reasons to be a planner
I get NO credit for this list… this was created by contributors to the Indiana APA listserv last Friday.. too good not to publicize! : Top 9 reasons I am ...
Midwest Govs banking on green jobs
I am not a very dedicated “greenie” (as evidenced by amount of petroleum tied up in Legos in my house), but I think the Midwest governors might be on to ...
Seven generations vs. shoot what flies
I started my professional life as a cultural resources consultant in northern Wisconsin (ok, that wasn’t quite the start, but it’s a long story…). During that time I had the ...
What are we talking about here?
How can a place like this be fixed? That is the question that has driven my career. I grew up in a Cleveland suburb watching the rippling impacts of closing ...
